


Lost and Found

by Moonlit_notebook



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Holt family reunion, Light Angst, Pidge | Katie Holt-centric, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-09
Updated: 2017-11-27
Packaged: 2018-12-13 03:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11751126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlit_notebook/pseuds/Moonlit_notebook
Summary: Katie "Pidge" Holt had been looking for her family for a little under a year. The search had brought her a ban from government property (after getting caught breaking in one too many times), a second identity, a one-way ticket halfway across the galaxy, an alien warship, and the weight of the universe on her shoulders.Now it brought her where she had wanted to be since the beginning.Katie Holt stared at the screen, at the Galran security footage, at her brother that had been pronounced dead a year ago.





	1. A Little Lost and a Little Worse for Wear

Pidge prided herself on many things. She could hack into alien battleships, no problem. Re-program an enemy drone? Sure. Need to sneak into a command center at a transport base? Give her five minutes to get ready. Need someone to take back your Galra occupied planet? She's your gal. Even if all you wanted was for someone to get rid of the virus on your laptop, she could do it.

Her piloting skills were not one of the skills she could brag about, however.

_"Quiznack!"_

In all fairness, she'd only read flight manuals until she'd been given a sentient alien warship and told to save the universe.

She was spinning out of control, away from the castle, away from her friends, and exited the wormhole way sooner than she should've. Still spinning, she managed to catch a glimpse of the planet under her, and the clearly-Galran command base that everything was centered around.

Somehow, and probably most of her lion's doing, she managed to pull some sort of maneuver and crash land on the planet's moon instead.

And if anyone asked? No, she was not screaming bloody murder the entire time.

Her lion's lights went dark as it entered what Pidge liked to call "Recovery Mode". It had to do this whenever it had to rebuild itself after a particularly awful battle or draining mission. Pidge sighed, wanting to get going so she could find her teammates.

"Alright, girl. You rest up. We've got to find the others soon. While you do that I'm going to find out what's on that planet," she said.

Green sent her warning and caution.

"I won't go far, don't worry."

She exited from the top hatch and left her lion.

She knew it was a bad idea. If anyone on the planet below had seen her crash then they'd be there soon to check it out, and with her lion in Recovery Mode she was the only thing to protect it. But she couldn't sit still for however long it would take for Green to recover. Besides, she'd promised to only go so far. She took care to stay within sight of her lion.

And while she was out here she could use some of the local flora and fauna to hide Green from peering eyes on the planet below. It wasn't the best she could do, but it was all she had in her current condition.  
So exploring she went. The moon was made of some grainy, sand like rocks. It had a lot of plant life for a moon, and especially in comparison to the planet it orbited. "That might be Galran influence on the planet's bio systems," she told herself. "I wonder why they're there."

Making a note to look for that when she hacked their systems, she continued her observations.

She circled her lion in a fifty-foot radius, finding a pond in one area and a wildflower field in the area directly across from it. "I wonder if they're edible," she commented aloud. Her emergency food supplies could only last her so long, and she doubted the Galran base wouldn't notice some missing food. She circled back to her lion, which had recovered enough to give her a diagnostics check.

The barrier crystals for the force field needed re-aligning. And she needed to do some fixing for full functionality and mobility. Even then, she'd need her supplies back at the Castle to make full repairs.

"Don't worry girl, I get you working as best as I can soon."

Her lion purred in response. Pidge smiled.

Best get to work.

* * *

  
Several hours later (Pidge wasn't sure of the exact timing, she'd fallen asleep after looking at the front thrusters) Green had 94% of her mobility back and the barrier crystals were (finally) re-aligned.

She cheered as the force field went up.

"Alright!" She felt her lion share in her minor victory and smiled at the dashboard. "Now, let's figure out where we are."

Green set up some of her sensors for her, along with sending another diagnostics report.

Communication systems were still down, and Pidge needed the stuff in her room back at the Castle to fix them. Navigation systems were also down, but Pidge could hack into a Galra base with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.

"No, it's just an idiom," she told her concerned lion. "I can't actually do it with my eyes closed."

Green sent her warnings of caution anyway. Pidge rolled her eyes, "Yeah, yeah. I'll be careful. Promise."

The base was just barely in range of her signal, something she was extremely grateful for. She worked quickly, scanning general records she could find without having to crack too much. Nothing confidential, she just wanted to know where she was and what the base was used for. She might note the location so that she could come back with her team and liberate the planet, like they had Shay's Balmera.

The planet that the Galra base was on was called "Cuenia" unofficially and was titled "S-235" in the files. The Galra were using prisoners to mine a metal that they used in making their ships.

She paused. Green sent concern.

"I'm fine, it's just-"

It was a work camp. Shiro said that her father had been sent to a work camp, and with any luck, Matt had too after Shiro had saved him.

"My family could be here."

She checked the prisoner files.

They weren't very detailed. They contained the prisoner's assigned number, their species, their arrival date, and a picture.

She searched for "Human".

Nothing.

"Terran."

Bingo. One result. 

Prisoner 117-9876, Terran, arrived a few months ago. The picture was a separate file.

She pulled it open and gasped. Green sent her worry and hope, but Pidge paid her lion no mind as she stared at someone she thought she'd never see again.

The hair alone would identify him, the cut a slightly shaggier version of Pidge's and the same color. But his eyes, that once overflowed with hope and promise, stared blankly passed the camera as if all the life and energy had been zapped out of them. His frame had already been skinny last she'd seen him, and now it was doubtless that he was starving.

Katie Holt looked at the picture of her older brother and cried.

"Matt?"


	2. Chapter 2

Matt Holt was very glad that he'd gotten his vision fixed before Kerberos. If he hadn't he probably wouldn't still be alive, what with all the shit the Galra put their prisoners through. He had spent a countless time on this planet alone, mining for this dark metal that was impossible to see, or pronounce. Without his glasses it should've been impossible to see, like anything else really, if he hadn't had that minor surgery. That being said, he wished he had his glasses anyway, if only for a reminder of what was waiting for him if he could ever escape.

He'd tried before. He just couldn't find the right time, or find anyway to beat the guards. He didn't have anything to hack into them with, and he admittedly wasn't as good at hacking as his sister Pidge, who surpassed even the people at the Garrison. He'd always been more into the people and biology, the more obscure side of science that his sister was less inclined to. But, point being, the guard robots couldn't be hacked at the moment. They could be sneaked past, sure, but that would take time, and possibly paper. Neither of which he really had. The vents weren't necessarily accessible from the ground, either, and where they were was watched closely whenever Matt was there. So until an opportunity presented itself, Matt was just going to wait it out. 

He was waiting it out, day by day, going through the motions, when he was on the surface of the planet (an event that didn't occur often for prisoners, but Matt was a little used to it because they liked to switch him between sections when he caused trouble. Which he did very little of, excuse you, just enough to stay entertained by this measly dump) when he saw a blur across one of the planet's moons. Once again thankful for eye surgery and the advancements that the human race had made to make up for their own shortcomings, he squinted at it, seeing the green mechanical- tiger? Lion? Cat thing? Maybe he was seeing it wrong- crash on the surface. It looked pretty bad, but the ship seemed undamaged for the most part. 

It didn't look like Galra tech. It didn't have that whole dark-purple-and-evil theme going on, and he'd never seen a Galran ship that looked quite like that. And that crash was certainly not a planned landing, as there was nothing there prepared for them, and they didn't crash on the planet's surface. And the impact left a sizable dent in the moon's surface. Matt worried for the pilot. If they weren't with the Galra, they'd best get out soon, so that the Galra don't come for them. And they would. His heart went out to them. Crashing into Galra territory, especially unplanned and unprepared, couldn't be forgiving. 

He turned his focus back to his escorts (it made him feel like a movie star, and less like an expendable prisoner of war lightyears away from his home planet) and wherever they were taking him this time. 

* * *

 

Pidge was increasingly grateful to Coran, who had packed repair tools in the emergency kits in their lions a while ago. Work on Green was tedious, and at times repetitive, but it kept her busy and her mind off who was on the planet below. 

But when she finally got the cloaking up, and thank heavens, she decided to give in to her restlessness and see what else she could get on Matt. She opened his file up again, which she never really closed, and all linked files that the Galra attached. There was a scale made up of red dots, of which Matt had five, looking into it a little showed that it was how much trouble her brother got into. The five marks showed that he'd been called in by authority five times (typical) and the color showed that he'd been relocated to a different area on the planet just as many times. 

Small times and dates were linked to each dot, which she didn't care about until she saw what Green said was yesterday's. 

"He's just been transferred!" she told her lion, who purred back. "Maybe I can sneak in and see him when it's night, do you think the sentries will notice?" Pidge didn't really care if the sentries would notice, but she didn't know how to get in and out with Matt with her lion in this state.

Green reassured her, with a comforting rumble, that they'd get her brother before it was too late. Before they had to leave. Pidge put her trust in her lion and set to work. If they had any chance of getting out of here alive she needed Green in working condition. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally called that Matt had his eyes fixed, even if I didn't post the chapter until now lol  
> Please leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed!


	3. Shades of Reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the slow updates, but I finally got an outline together for this, so chapters will be longer and quicker. It also means that the chapter count has appeared, though nothing is set in stone yet.

The Green Lion was finally working enough to go planet-side, and Pidge was more than excited. Her lion had frequently called her down for overthinking, or as Green put it, "Worrying about unimportant things". In Pidge's opinion, what her brother would think of her armor was incredibly important. But Green was right in that worrying about actually getting to see Matt, and how she would sneak in to do so, should be the first thing in her priorities.

There was a small field of something to the left of the camp. The records Pidge found indicated that it wouldn't be important for another decade when the Galra would dig it up to make another mine. So it was the perfect place to hide Green while she spoke to Matt. She was going to take her speeder to the actual camp as soon as it hit dark, and she'd sneak into Matt's cell block on foot. Since he was on probation he was in a cell by himself, which just made her job easier. 

Until dark though, she was stuck on the moon loading sentry movements and tracking systems onto her gauntlet. 

* * *

If Matt Holt knew that his little sister was going to sneak into his prison block that night, he would not have been messing with the wiring in his cell so that the light changed colors. He would've played it safe. But in all fairness, he had no idea that his sister wasn't on Earth, much less one of the driving forces against the Galra and the pilot he'd seen crash into Katixa's moon earlier that day.  So you couldn't blame him for wanting to mess with the Galra at his own expense. 

So when his sister did show up, he thought he was one of those robots that do the dirty work of the Empire. He continued on about his re-wiring job, waiting for the robot to tell him to stop or else. But it did not. In fact, it asked "What are you doing?" in a completely curious manner. What really threw him off was the voice. He'd know his little sister's voice anywhere. Thinking it a Galra trick (But where did they get her voice? Is she safe? They didn't go after her because I was causing trouble, did they?) he turns to look at the figure. It's not a robot. It's shorter- shorter than him. It's not the Galra purple-gray. Its armor is white and green. It is not a robot. 

"Pidge?" Matt asks, barely audible.

"It's me, Matt," his little sister says. 

In an instant, fast enough to give them both whiplash, Matt launches himself to the door. She opens it and welcomes his hug. He holds her tighter than he thinks he ever has, and she returns it in kind. 

"Oh, Katie..." he says. "I didn't think I'd ever get to see you again. I thought I'd die here and no one would ever hear from me again."

"They said you were dead!" Is Pidge's wobbly response. "They said that you and dad were dead and that it was Shiro's fault... but Shiro would never! He's one of the best pilots, and, and-"

Matt just squeezes tighter. He thought of Shiro, who sacrificed himself so that Matt could find and save his father. Shiro, who was Matt's roommate while they were at the Galaxy Garrison. Shiro, who had graduated with Matt. Shiro, who had fought in the Galra's gladiator ring.

Matt held his sister tighter and banished all thoughts of Shiro from his mind. Pidge was right, Shiro would never let himself be the cause of their death. "It's alright, pigeon. It's okay now."

She pulls out from the hug, with teary eyes, a small smile, and an "I'm so glad I found you."

"Yeah, actually," Matt said. "How did you find me? How did you even get this far into space?"

"It's a really long story. And I don't actually have enough time- but, um. Is there any chance you've heard of Voltron?"

"Isn't that a kids story? The others talk about it a lot. They say it's come back and stuff. That it's the only thing that can beat the Galra. Did they get you? Is that it?"  
"Not exactly. I'm one of the paladins."

" _What?_ No way!"

A little charm comes from her wrist. She opens it to a hologram and curses (Matt doesn't yell at her because they're in the middle of an intergalactic war and she just found him, she can curse all she wants.)

"I've got to go. I can't really take you with me... My lion isn't in the best condition after that crash."

"Yeah. I've actually got some friends in the other prison blocks that could really use some of Voltron's help too. Do you think you could get them out too?"

"Once we get the team back together we could probably free the entire planet. And then we can find Dad."

"So the team's not with you?"

"No. We got separated last battle- but finding them again is just a matter of getting my lion's communication systems back online. Then I can contact the Castle and we can all meet up."

Her wrist chimes again. She moves outside the door and closes it. "I'll be back tomorrow, and we'll get you out of there. Just try not to cause any trouble until then."

"Me? Cause trouble? Never. Honestly, Pidgeotto, I have no idea what you're talking about."

She laughs, a quiet version of how she laughed before this mess. That's the first thing that tips Matt off to how different this version of his little sister is. (What else are the Galra going to take from my family?) Matt pushes all his thoughts aside and focuses on that he's getting out. His little sister is here and he's getting out of here. Everyone on this planet is. The Galra would not win today.

His shit eating grin lasts all night.

* * *

When Pidge gets back to Green, the lion welcomes her back with a warm purr.

"Hey, beautiful," the paladin says. "Let's work on those communication systems, yeah?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed! 


	4. Plans Abridged

It was several hours before Pidge actually got the communications up again, but when she did she cheered loud enough for the Galra to hear her if they weren't separated by a vacuum of space which no particles existed for sound waves to travel through, but that was hardly the point. The point was that Pidge could call the other paladins and find her team.

She calls the Castle first- anxiously bouncing around in her chair while Green tries to establish contact. She counts the seconds, losing track around eighty and restarting. She makes it to seventy again when the Castle answers her call and Green purrs happily.

"Allura!" Pidge exclaims happily. "Glad you're okay! I'm sending my coordinates over to you- have you found anyone else? Did we all get separated?"

Allura greets her paladin with a warm smile. "We're all happy to see you Pidge, and yes, Coran and I have found Lance and Hunk. They were together and managed to hail us with a beacon from the planet they were on. We've yet to find Shiro and Keith, but with your help, it's only a matter of time. We're heading over there to get you."

"Actually, princess-" Pidge says. "-can you wait a while? I found my brother. He's on a Galra occupied planet that I'm currently in orbit around, and I'd like to free everyone there, not just Matt. I'm sure the people would make good allies in the fight against the Galra and Zarkon. I just- need to get him out first."

The look Allura gives her isn't exactly pity, but not without either. "Of course, Pidge. We'll continue our search for Keith and Shiro while you rescue Matt. Do you need our help? Do you want to free the entire planet in one go or just get Matt and come back for the rest of the prisoners?" The look was understanding. Allura understood why Pidge wanted to get her brother before going back to the castle, even if going back to the castle first was wiser. 

"I'm going to get him first. Then I'll catch up with you guys and we can get the team back together and free the planet. Thank you, Allura."

* * *

When Pidge sneaks into Matt's cell that night, he's ready to go and anxious to do so. She wordlessly leads him out of the prison, carefully avoiding the sentries that guard the hallways, and silently taking out the ones along their path. It didn't matter now, they'd be gone in the morning. 

Matt is a huge help in taking out the robots, despite his situation. He tells her that he'd had too much experience with them and that he knew of their design flaws and how to exploit them. There was a story behind that, Pidge knew, but she didn't have time to ask now. And there would be time later.

There would be time later.

It wasn't a new concept to Pidge, not really. But it had been one that she'd abandoned when the Garrison had the press-release about the Kerberos Mission's failure. She didn't think that there would be a "later" concerning Matt, but there was one now. Now she had her brother back. Now she could tell him everything. Now she could show him everything she'd done since she left Earth. 

In her distraction, however, she accidentally walked into the eyesight of one of the guards. One she hadn't planned on shutting down. Regardless, before it can shoot her Matt takes the makeshift bo staff Pidge threw together for him to its head and knocks it clean off. Pidge checks her gauntlet and- yes. They've got two minutes before another guard crosses this hallway and sees the mess. They need to go. 

She tells Matt this, and they pick up their pace with less care for how loud they are. That being said, they were intercepted two turns from the exit. A crowd of sentries, more than ten but less than fifteen, cut them off. They're headed by an actual Galra, dressed in commanding officer armor and wearing a shit-eating grin.

 _"Quiznack!"_ Pidge says under her breath. She and Matt scan for any other exits- and when another crowd of sentries (without a leader this time) takes form behind them they have no way of escape. Well, almost no way.

"I knew you were trouble, but to get the help of a Paladin of Voltron? What strings did you have to pull?" The officer just laughs, and Matt doesn't answer his question. Pidge only half listens to what he's saying, as she thinks through her next actions carefully. "Well, it doesn't matter now. Because of your lame attempt at escape, I have a prisoner that Emperor Zarkon will be pleased to have his hands on."

That gets a response out of Matt, "You leave her _alone."_

Pidge reaches out to the Green Lion, who thankfully isn't that far away. She takes out her bayard and prepares to fight. 

The officer just laughs, but it isn't a happy sound. It's mean. It's bitter. It's arrogant. _'Bingo'_ Pidge thought. He was too confident. In all fairness, he had the Holts surrounded. But Pidge had been surrounded before, and Matt had been Zarkon's prisoner for far too long. 

The green paladin shouts, a rallying, loud, fighting war cry, and she throws her Bayard through the group of sentries to the left of the officer and repeats the action to the group behind her. Her brother follows her lead and uses his staff like a baseball bat, taking out the other half and giving the officer a good-sounding whack on the head. 

Unfortunately, all that does is make the officer upset. But now Pidge and Matt are free to run toward the exit. And they do. They go loudly and clumsily, but keep their feet under them. "Come on! Just outside!" she tells her brother as they make the last turn.

Then they're outside, and the Green Lion is there and it catches them. Then Pidge is back in the pilot's chair and flying them off the planet. 

* * *

She doesn't let herself breathe until she's two systems away from the planet and the prison. Matt is behind her, wearing the change of clothes she'd kept in her lion in hope of eventually finding him, and watching all of Green's systems with awe. 

It takes her a moment, but then it hits her full force. She has her brother back.

Katie had found Matt and rescued him. 

Matt was _home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked it please leave comments and kudos!


	5. Chapter 5

It's a long time before either of them can sleep, even though they'd been flying through open space for hours and Green had offered to take over on autopilot. But when one of them does fall asleep, it's Matt. He's curled up on the small bunk in the back of Green's head and the change of clothes that Pidge had (which were Hunk's, who was the only one close enough to her brother's height) given him were draping over his form and making him look a lot smaller than he actually was. 

Pidge doesn't think about it, about what being Zarkon's prisoner did to her brother, and instead thinks of everything that they would do now that they were together again. She fell asleep not long after him, in the pilot's chair. 

The Green Lion sends their location to the castle and flies itself there. It knew that it's paladin needed rest and that she was much calmer with her older brother around. She was feeling happier now. Green would wake the young girl when their destination was closer. 

* * *

When Matt wakes up his sister is piloting the lion again, but this time there's a seat for him right behind her's. He sits in it. She turns to look at him, and her smile is maybe a little smaller than he remembers. 

"Hey, sleepyhead. Sleep well?" she asks.

"Yep! Got all the beauty rest I need!"

"I don't know, I'd get a few more years if I were you," she says, and Matt is pleased that at the return of their teasing along comes the return of her impossibly wide grin and sharp wit. 

"So, how did you become a Paladin of Voltron, anyway?" Matt asks.

"Do you know what happened to Shiro after you got separated in the Gladiator Arena?" 

Matt deflates as if the question had the same effect on him as popping a balloon with a pin would. His teasing grin melts into a frown, and his bright eyes turn away and dull. He truly looked broken, and if this is what the Galra did to all their prisoners then Pidge was definitely freeing that planet. And any others she could get her hands on. Before he even answers the question, Pidge knows what he will say. 

So instead of letting him answer, she says: "He escaped, after a while. He crashed on Earth."

Matt looks at her with such awe, as if escape hadn't been something he'd been planning the entire time he was captive. He looks at her as if Shiro escaping, as if anyone escaping, is a pure miracle and a pure gift from the heavens. Pidge only really sees it then, even though she's long known and fought, the true horrors that the Galra could do to a person. And if she hadn't seen it then the small whisper of "he escaped?" would've told her.

"Yeah. I was in the Garrison- which is. Um. A funny story..."

"You got into the Garrison?" Matt asked.

Pidge winced. "No, not really. I kind of, er, hacked my way in. Registered myself as 'Pidge Gunderson' and got in that way. I had sort of gotten caught sneaking into Commander Iverson's office- so Katie Holt was a little compromised. I was a communications officer. My team, Hunk and Lance, were with me when we saw Shiro crash. The Garrison set up a tent and had him quarantined until we snuck in and got him out, with Keith's help."

"Keith? The one that used to follow Shiro around?"

"Yeah. He got kicked out for whatever reason, but then we found the Blue Lion- Voltron's right leg- and it took us to this planet where we found Allura and Coran-"

"Who?"

"They're aliens that know a lot about Voltron. I'll introduce you to them. They helped us find the rest of the lions and trained us to form Voltron and how to fight and all that stuff."

Pidge messes with Green's controls, letting the silence between her and Matt stretch for a minute or so. 

"That's awesome," Matt says.

"Yeah," she said. "So. How'd you end up here with that kind of track record?"

Matt snorts. "You saw that?" At Pidge's nod, he continues, "You know how I am. I can't sit still no matter how hard I try. And I don't like rules too much. I might've.... messed around a little. I'm honestly surprised the Galra didn't kill me after the first incident."

"Yeah, that's weird. I'm sure they have some reason, right? Like maybe they wanted to cultivate your evil genius."

"Or the guy in charge was too lazy to give me a death sentence."

"Maybe. Maybe Shiro knows."

"Did... Is... Is Shiro okay? After the arena, I mean."

Pidge didn't want to answer, but when she saw Matt's face she knew she had to. He was pleading, begging, to know. She knew he would feel guilty about what happened to Shiro, and even though she knew he would find out eventually, she wanted to keep it from him a little while longer.

However, when she was silent too long, Matt gasped and said; "Oh no, how bad?" in a small voice that Pidge was getting uncomfortably familiar with.

"Not bad, he's just. Um. He lost his right arm. It's a prosthetic now, made by the Galra. And he's got some scars. And he's got PTSD, but that's to be expected, right? He went through a lot of stuff. And it wasn't your fault, Matt. It wasn't any of our faults."

"He took my place, Katie."

Matt was crying. Silent tears overflowing out of his eyes and down his face, dripping just as silently onto the floor. Pidge hadn't seen her brother cry in years. Not since he had worked himself to the bone his sophomore year of high school and broke down at the dinner table.

"Matt," she tries desperately.

"He went in the arena instead of me. I was supposed to go and he took my place. I let him. I told him I couldn't do it and he took my place. It's my fault. I let him go. I said I couldn't do it and now he's messed up because I was a coward. Because I couldn't man up and face a problem. Because I couldn't fight my own battles. He fought it for me, Katie. _It's my fault."_

They're both crying now. Pidge stands up and pulls her older brother into a hug and buries her face in his chest. He sobs through her hair. She shakes in his arms. It's a few minutes of choked sobs and dripping tears, with Green purring comfort throughout the cockpit, before Pidge speaks up again. 

"It's not your fault." She steps out of the tight embrace and wipes her face on her sleeves. She looks Matt in the eye. "It's not your fault. Shiro chose to take your place. You had no part in it.  Shiro will tell you the same thing. He doesn't blame you Matt, and you shouldn't either. It wasn't your fault. It was the Galra's. It was Zarkon's. It wasn't yours."

Matt dries his tears in the same manner as his sister and exhales deeply. "Okay," he says. "Okay."

"Okay," Pidge agrees. "Come on, we're nearly in wormhole range."

"Wormhole?" Matt asks, all evidence of crying, ave for the red eyes and scratchy voice, gone. 

"Oh yeah, I can't wait to show you."

* * *

Their arrival at the castle is more ceremonious than average, with the team lined up in Green's hangar waiting anxiously for Pidge's return. 

Pidge hops out of her lion, Matt not far behind, and greets everyone with "Guys, this is my brother, Matt."

"Pidgeon!" Lance yells. "How dare you find your brother without us! Taking all the glory!" he teases. Pidge fights him off as he ruffles her hair, and turns to Matt.

"This is Lance."

"I'm Pidge's new older brother, so we're like, cousins now."

"Wouldn't you be brothers too?" Keith asks, coming closer.

"No, that'd be weird. We're cousins."

"Half-siblings?" Hunk suggests.

"I think it's more step-siblings," Pidge says. 

"I don't know, I've never had either," Lance said. 

"Matt this is Hunk, and you already know Keith."

Allura and Coran make their way over, Shiro unconsciously hiding behind them. Coran is the first to wiggle into the group, asking what step-siblings and half-siblings were and what the difference was. Lance and Hunk try to explain, with less-than-helpful interjections from Keith. Matt silently watches them go back and forth, before seeing Allura as she made her way to him.

"Hello, Matt. It's a pleasure to meet you, finally. Pidge has told us a lot about you."

Matt goes heart eyed, and when Pidge sees this she elbows him below the ribs while saying, "This is Princess Allura."

"Ow! Uh- hi. It's wonderful to meet you, Princess. I hope my sister has said good things."

"That wasn't as awkward as I thought it would be," Lance stage whispers to Hunk.

"Yeah," Keith says, "He's much smoother than you."

"Hey!"

The two lightly banter, but Pidge is watching Matt as Shiro silently makes his way to him. Matt meets him halfway and looks him up and down, as if assessing the damage. Matt lifts Shiro's prosthetic gently and Pidge sees the beginnings of water in his eyes. Shiro lets him look at the arm, but then uses it to pull him into a hug. 

"Matt," they hear Shiro whisper.

"'Kashi," Pidge hears Matt say, just as quietly. 

Pidge decides to let them have their moment (they deserve it) and turns to Allura. "So, about freeing that planet?"

The princess grins widely. "We've already devised a plan, to be carried out tomorrow."

"Excellent."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proofreading is for people who don't write self-indulgent fanfiction.
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you thought of the last chapter! I'm planning a new fic that's very Matt-centric in a different universe, to be published in the next month if not the next week. Be sure to be on the lookout for that, and please give any constructive criticism or things I could improve on!
> 
> Also find me on Tumblr! @moonlit-notebook


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